We've seen a lot of versions over the last couple of years, but here is a peek at what the new downtown Sacramento arena will actually look like.
The Sacramento Kings released final arena renderings for the downtown Sacramento arena in the early, early morning on Tuesday.
Released shortly after midnight to Kings season ticket holders first, the public now has a complete view of what the arena, which is slated to be opened at the Downtown Plaza site in October 2016, will look like in the heart of downtown Sacramento.
Assistant city manager John Dangberg and developer Mark Friedman have stated their goal to make the arena a "grand civic space," and these photos certainly demonstrate that by illustrating the idea of creating an indoor/indoor facility.
The glass "Grand Entrance," pictured above, will measure 50 x 150 feet (five stories high) and open up. The arena will also have multiple balconies, feature Farm-To-Fork programming throughout the facility and the skin of the arena will be constructed using materials such as glass, recycled aluminum and precast concrete.
Here are a few renderings of the bowl.
The new arena would be larger than Sleep Train Arena (650,000 square feet, according to The Sacramento Bee - Sleep Train Arena is 442,000 square feet). The Bee also states that the new arena will have fewer seats than Sleep Train Arena (between 17,000-17,300). But the building would be constructed to allow more people to view the games through unique standing-room only spots and viewing opportunities from outside of the facility.
Here is a video from Kings President Chris Granger and Kings Owner Vivek Ranadive about the new renderings.
The city is expected to contribute $258 million toward the $448 million arena.
Last Friday, the Sacramento city clerk rejected Sacramento Taxpayers Opposed to Pork's (STOP) petition to put the city's financing plan on the ballot, citing numerous errors that violated election code. STOP has been mulling over whether to take legal action against the city clerk's decision, but no formal suit has been filed yet. Ryan Lillis of The Sacramento Beereported Monday that the suit is expected soon, however.
Reports from election law experts say that any suit against the city clerk will have little chance of success. Here is Monday's report on this from Ben van der Meer of the Sacramento Business Journal.
And then there is this from Michael McCann, legal analyst for Sports Illustrated and NBA TV.
@mrarmchair A judge would be very reluctant to reverse Sacramento clerk on ballot issues given wide discretion accorded to clerk under law.
— Michael McCann (@McCannSportsLaw) January 24, 2014@AL_NorCal@DaveLack Don't know of an arena plan that got this far & was then stopped. IMO, odds of Sacramento arena being stopped are tiny.
— Michael McCann (@McCannSportsLaw) January 27, 2014For more arena-related stories, click here.